January 2018

NEWS 3 produced items, such as bottled beverages, into custom six-packs on-the- fly – in any combination of flavours – without altering the production hardware. The diverters can also eject defective items as soon as they are identified, rather than them having to continue to the end of the line. “The diverter is – quite literally – a pivotal component of the system," explains Kickinger. “It is 100% electromagnetic and therefore entirely free of wear.” Like a road junction, the diverter allows product flows to diverge and converge. “The diverter allows the shuttles to switch tracks at full speed, with no compromise in productivity,” Kickinger adds. At the core of the track system are long-stroke linear motors assembled from a choice of track segments, including straight sections and curves in 45 and 22.5 degree angles. This variety will allow designers to create open and closed layouts in almost any configuration. They simply describe the rules that define the product flow on the track, rather than having to program axes and shuttles individually. Layouts can be simulated in 3D on a PC to test configurations and application code before deploying any hardware. This will reduce development times and help to get machines to market faster, says B&R. The track is protected by a stainless- steel housing that meets hygiene requirements in food and pharmaceutical applications. The ACOPOStrak system has been developed in-house by B&R – unlike its earlier SuperTrak system, launched two years ago, which was designed by the Canadian developer, ATS Automation. B&R will continue to offer SuperTrak, which is limited to oval configurations, but has a larger load-carrying capacity than the new system. B&R has not yet revealed the load- handling capabilities of the new system. ACOPOStrak is already being used by several pilot customers, including the bottling machinery giant Krones, which is using it in a system that allows each bottle to be filled with a different liquid, with an appropriate label and cap. The Italian labelling machinery specialist, Makro, is using the track system instead of traditional carousels, offering users far more flexibility. And the indexing table manufacturer, Weiss, is using ACOPOStrak in a new production system. Videos of these applications can be viewed on B&R’sWeb site. “In developing the intelligent ACOPOStrak transport system,”Robert Kickinger concludes,“we have set the stage for revolutionary newmachine concepts.” www.br-automation.com ‘Revolutionary’ linear motor P roduction transport system is first to handle batches of one AT THE RECENT SPS IPC Drives show in Germany, ABB’s recently-acquired subsidiary, B&R Automation, unveiled an “intelligent” transport system designed to bring new levels of flexibility to high-speed movement of production-line components, carried on independently controlled shuttle carriages. B&R claims that the linear-motor-driven ACOPOStrak system extends the economies of mass production down to batches of one for the first time. Manufacturers will be able to produce many different variants of a product on one machine, without needing to interrupt production. “It will change the way that flexible machines are built,” predicts B&R’s manager of mechatronic technology, Robert Kickinger. He describes the system as “motion control technology for the age of digitalisation”. The track’s hot-swappable shuttles can be replaced within seconds without needing any tools. They are held in place on the track by permanent magnets. All the operator has to do is to place the wheels of the shuttle onto the track’s guides. The system is capable of 5g acceleration and can reach top speeds of more than 4m/s, with a minimum spacing between the shuttles of just 50mm. The tracks can be more than 100m long and can each carry more than 250 shuttles, controlled by a single PC. A key element to the system is the use of wear- and maintenance-free electromagnetic diverters that can divide and merge product flows at full production speeds. Collision avoidance is built in. Among the diverters’many claimed advantages is the ability to include“pit lanes”in the track layout, where new component-carrying shuttles can be mounted onto the track – by humans or robots – and then sent onto the production line via a diverter. Any shuttles that are no longer needed can simply be rerouted to a pit lane. This takes place at full production speed. “It becomes possible to perform product changeovers with zero downtime,” Kickinger explains. Another use for the diverters is to split products among several parallel stations for slow processes. Product flows can be divided, pass through multiple processing stations, and then converge further down the line. Production speeds are no longer restricted by the station with the slowest processing time. This will boost productivity without increasing the machine footprint, says B&R. One potential application will be to group mass- “In developing the intelligent ACOPOStrak transport system, we have set the stage for revolutionary new machine concepts” www.drivesncontrols.com January 2018 B&R’s demonstration of its track system attracted large crowds to its stand at the SPS IPC Drives show. The shuttles (which look like dots) were being sent along individual paths at high speed.